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A population which understands the politicians’ role can help the latter to perform better. Education in several disciplines is necessary:
· People should be able to evaluate a government’s economic decisions, particularly on taxation and public spending, to understand whose interests are being served and to recognise how the national debt is affected.
· They should understand their political system and be aware of the different political ideologies and approaches.
· They need to have some knowledge of history, particularly to help them to connect historical political decisions to their consequences, and to recognise where these are comparable to current situations.
· Education in critical thinking, such as in the humanities, can help people to detect bias, illogicality and omissions. Everybody needs to be aware of the potential problems with what they see and hear on the media – and to know that it is helpful to cross-check material from different sources if they want to know what is really happening.
If people lack either education or interest in political matters they have to look to others for guidance, making them more susceptible to being misled. They are also less able to participate in public discussion.[1]
As well as helping people to get the best from their politicians, education can help to stabilise society:
· As has already been mentioned (6.7.4.9), education can help different ethnic groups to understand each other better and thereby reduce the likelihood of conflict between them.
· Education can help people to understand the need to negotiate with others.
· People who lack the education to think for themselves are likely to be uncritical in following the leaders of groups with whom they are associated. This can be dangerous because irresponsible leaders can deliberately exacerbate ethnic divisions to challenge the government and threaten the unity of the country (6.7.4.2).
· Educated people are less likely to be resentful in some circumstances. They might understand that economic performance can be affected by external factors and how a previous government’s decisions have affected the current situation (3.3.8).
These aspects of education are additional to the training required to equip people for economic activity (3.2.5) and the education to help them to achieve fulfilment in other ways.
© PatternsofPower.org, 2014
[1] Ronald Dworkin highlighted the need for education in his book Is Democracy Possible Here? At the start of chapter 5 (p. 128) he quoted some empirical evidence:
“In 1996 pollsters set out a long list of questions about current events that they deemed critical to the election that year; no more than half the public polled could answer even 40% of those questions."